ENCOUNTER by Hep Aldridge (bill gates books recommendations .txt) 📕

with moss and small plants. The carving was a man standing with what looked like a robe on, hands clasped in front with his head looking skyward from under the cowl of his robe. The features of the face were still in very good shape, and it was easy to tell he bore no resemblance to any indigenous peoples we had seen since arriving in Ecuador.

“What do you make of that?” Doc said, staring at the carving.

“Don’t think he’s from around here,” Joe said.

We had all gathered around the statue. We took pictures and shot video of it and its surroundings, which on closer inspection turned out to be a carved stone platform covered by undergrowth.

“I think it’s telling us this stream was important, and we are on the right track. For what, I’m not sure, but it’s obvious he was put here for a reason.”

“Agreed,” Doc said, as he took a couple more pictures before we continued.

An hour later, Joe said, “Hey, Colt, the Vatican dudes are on the move again.” He had stopped and was looking at his pad.

I walked back to him and said, “Show me.” He held it up and hit play. I could plainly see the Inca Road from a jungle viewpoint, and then the men walked by, following the road and walking past the camera hidden up the trail we had made.

“They didn’t see our trail,” he said.

“No, they just walked on past, thinking we stayed on the road. Hot damn, that’s great. Now, if they will just keep following it, we can extend our lead and maybe even shake them completely,” I said.

The others had gathered and looked at the video.

“That puts them almost two days behind us,” Dimitri said, grinning.

“Yep, so we don’t want to waste our lead. We’ll keep an eye on the trail, but we got miles to go, so let’s get a move on.”

The path next to the pool was even fainter than our previous track. It was apparent it had not been traveled in many, many years. It was a good thing we knew to follow the stream. It was early afternoon when we finally got to the big pool described by the two elders, and sure enough, there was another barely visible path turning west at the pool.

“This must be our turn,” I said jokingly since nothing but undergrowth lay straight ahead. The water filling the pool was running down a small waterfall, the source of the water coming from underground. No water was visible anywhere above the pool. We took a short break, let the mules drink, and topped off our water supply before heading in our new direction.

The thought that we were getting close to the village where it all started made my heart race. This would have been the village where the priest who wrote the journals sent to the king of Spain had lived in the early 1700s. And where our priest found him over 400 years later, alive. Unbelievable.

The path was level with no significant elevation changes, and three hours later, we came to a clearing. In front of us were the remains of stone huts, their roofs mostly gone, and many of their walls had caved in. But there were remnants of at least thirty buildings. Doc walked up next to me, and we both stood there, silent.

Finally, he said, “This is it, Colt; this is the Shuar village where the priest lived. This is amazing. We have been talking about it and reading about it for the last couple of years, and now, here we are; we’re actually standing in the place written about in his journals,” he said in a reverent voice.

Everyone was standing in a line, looking into the deserted village, saying nothing.

Finally, Reggie broke the silence and said, “So, this is the deserted village you guys have been looking for?”

I turned to her and said, “Yes, I do believe it is. This is the village where the two elders lived that we talked to in Tamara’s village last year.”

It was starting to get dark, so we found an area to unload the mules and tie them. Before full dark set in, we quickly surveyed what remained of the village. Some huts were in better shape than others, and some still had pots and other utensils lying around, but most were empty. It was an eerie feeling—like walking through a ghost town.

“Let’s get a fire going and set up camp; we’re going to have a long day tomorrow.”

Eduardo came up and said in a very excited voice, “Are we going to find the library tomorrow?”

“No, not tomorrow. We first have to locate the Lost City of the Gods that we read about in the priest’s journals. Then, hopefully, we will find more clues that will help us find the location of the library.” He looked a little disappointed, so I quickly added, “But I think we are getting close.” That did the trick; he perked up and went about helping set up camp.

The spaghetti and meatballs from the MRE tasted especially good tonight, and the oatmeal raisin cookies hit the spot for dessert. As the firelight flickered on the battered and crumbling walls around us, I couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like living here all those hundreds of years ago—the sights, the smells and sounds, raw and unfiltered by a mind bound by the constructs of our modern civilization. I wondered if Father Gonzalez felt the same excitement I was feeling, sitting on the brink of a potentially history-changing discovery. All the expeditions that came before us, none of them had ever come this close. Not even the Hall expedition of 1976 with Neil Armstrong had gotten anywhere near here. I laughed to myself as a thought returned to me from over a year ago when we discovered they were looking in the wrong place. And here we were, a bunch of fairly amateur explorers, possibly days away from the discovery of a lifetime.

I came